Peak oil activists remain optimistic despite ‘scary’ Halloween conference

Peak oil activists from across the nation gathered on a college campus over the Halloween weekend to confront the scary prospects of declining worldwide oil production – and to focus on how they and their communities can cope. “People can find ways to lead happy, fulfilling lives even as this doomed system crumbles all around them,” Russian immigrant writer Dmitry Orlov told the conference.

The post-oil novel revisited!

Unlike the other post-oil novels published so far, Ill Wind isn’t about peak oil. In those other novels, oil has gradually dribbled away while we’ve steadfastly ignored the warning signs. But in Ill Wind, the world’s oil vanishes suddenly after some bizarre, experimental oil-eating microbe is unleashed on a massive tanker spill, and then runs amok. What Ill Wind and those other novels do have in common, however, is that they imagine a future world without oil.

Transition Towns: Learning to build a good life together

The Transition Town model is a very different way to address peak oil and climate change than most of those now getting headlines. We hear a lot about getting other people to do something: Build electric cars, erect wind turbines, re-build passenger rail or sign the Kyoto Protocol. In Transition Towns, people get together themselves to weatherize each others’ homes, repair bicycles, create community gardens, and plant nut and fruit trees in parks and along streets.

Transport – Nov 23

California officials unveil plans to turn San Francisco into electric car capital
Blueprint of railways development in China
A better way forward for bicyclists (making motorists liable)
Kunstler: Water transit